On Sunday of this week my Dad and I shot the Sin City Shooters Steel Challenge match in Las Vegas, Nevada. A Steel Challenge stage has the shooter start in a box and shoot four steel plates of various shapes and sizes and one 12″ round “stop plate”. Every shooter is allowed five timed strings, the worst of which is thrown out. Sin City Shooters have a Steel Challenge match once every month, which typically consist of four of the eight Steel Challenge stages and one “fun” stage, where an all steel USPSA stage is set up with however many steel targets the stage designer wants. A “fun” stage may or may not require the shooter to move or reload, as it is not an official Steel Challenge stage.

Dad and I arrived at the range at the Desert Sportsman Rifle/Pistol/Shotgun club at 9:00 to help set up the stages, but because there are so few targets required to put on a Steel Challenge, the stages were already set up. At the shooter’s meeting we met one of the shooters from our local USPSA club, Daniel Evans, who drove all the way down from St. George early in the morning and arrived an hour early because he forgot about the time difference between St. George, Utah, and Las Vegas, Nevada. We requested that he be squadded up with us because he is on the Southern Utah Pistol committee that is in charge of setting up a Steel Challenge in St. George. Dad and I are also on the Steel Challenge committee.

Once our squads were announced we moved to our first stage, an official Steel Challenge stage called “5 to Go“. On Dad’s first string he discovered that his gun, a .22lr Browning Buckmark, was malfunctioning. This surprised us because it worked perfectly when we tested it two days ago. It malfunctioned so often that he decided to switch divisions and shoot our Limited division Brazos Custom STI 2011 in .40 S&W that a local Grandmaster(top 5% of our sport) worked on. My strings didn’t go to well either, because my Kimber .22 conversion kit on a Kimber Desert Warrior .45acp wasn’t working. I opted to stick with the Kimber, however, because it didn’t jam as often.

Our next stage, also an official Steel Challenge stage, was “Smoke and Hope“. Smoke and Hope, the fastest of the Steel Challenge stages, consists of four 18″x24″ rectangular steel plates and one 12″ stop plate. After changing ammo from Federal Value Pack to Remington Hollowpoint, I had one misfire on Smoke and Hope.

The next stage was a “fun” stage, which required the shooter to shoot two rounds at a white IPSC sized steel target, reload, shoot two more from the kneeling position, reload again, and shoot from the prone position. I did the fun stage well with no gun issues. It seemed as though the worst was far behind us when another shooter, Bob Hall, showed up to test his gun, another Browning Buckmark similar to the gun that Dad started the match with. When he heard what the problem was with our Buckmark, Bob thought he knew what the problem was. When he disassembled it he noticed that the topstrap, held in place by screws, was missing a locknut. He found the missing locknut wedged between the guide rod and the slide. Once the locknut was removed and the gun properly reassembled, Bob test fired it on an empty bay. As we moved to our next stage, Bob test fired the gun before returning it, reporting that it had functioned flawlessly.

On the next stage, and official Steel Challenge page called Pendulum, I ran out of Hollowpoint ammo and had to switch to CCI blazer ammo, which caused a malfunction because it is a very light-loaded round. Hollowpoint worked well in my gun because Hollowpoint is a more powerful hunting bullet, while Blazer is a “plinking” round. Because Blazer recoiled less, the slide didn’t have enough speed to overcome the hammer spring on the .45acp lower receiver that was mated to the conversion kit, resulting in the gun firing, but the slide not cycling.

I discovered this on the next stage, a “fun” stage requiring 32 rounds, where the shooter had to engage numerous arrays of Pepper poppers and 12″ round plates and finish the stage on two of the dreaded “Texas Stars“, also known as “Whirlygigs”. Daniel Evans, also shooting in the .22 pistol division, remarked to me that he would have to have someone reload his magazines while he shot, because he only had three 10-round magazines for his Walther p-22. I offered to let him shoot my gun, and he accepted. After taking him to the side of the bay to transfer my gun, magazines, and magazine holders, Daniel shot the stage. He probably would have been better off shooting his Walther, as the Kimber jammed as I described earlier nearly every other shot. After apologizing to Daniel I decided to shoot the newly repaired and reliable Buckmark. On the “fun” stage my total time was 65.3 seconds. Daniel Evans, due to malfunctions, had a time of 156.39 seconds.

Our last stage of the day, arguably the hardest of the Steel Challenge stages, was Outer Limits. On the only Steel Challenge stage that requires movement, the shooter is required to shoot at one 12″x18″ rectangle at 35 yards, shoot a 12″ round plate at 20 yards, then move to another shooting box, engage a rectangular and a round plate, then shoot the stop plate to finish. On his last string, Dad hit his foot on one of the shooting boxes, sending a shooting pain up his back, which had been hurting for a week. I shot the 35 yard targets well but had to take some makeup shots at the 12″ plates because the red fiber optic sight on the Buckmark was larger in my sight picture than the targets.

My total time for the entire Steel Challenge match added up to 159.92 seconds, beating Dad’s time of 177.32 by 22.4 seconds. This placed me eighth overall, which isn’t too bad with a jamming gun. You can see the entire results for the Sin City Shooters Steel Challenge here.